I have a guess, just based on some observations. I believe Google is significantly ahead, but has no internal pressure to disrupt their own search product. I th

I have a guess, just based on some observations. I believe Google is significantly ahead, but has no internal pressure to disrupt their own search product. I think this state of things was fairly clear since around 2015 when key SV VC folks started getting interested in creating their own AI play which became OpenAI. The “open” part of the name was always a reaction against Google which invented these wonders, then stuffed them in a safe deposit box. Microsoft is of course interested because ChatGTP already seems dangerously close to disrupting Google search. And there are whispers that GTP-4 will be another big step forward, maybe even big enough for the eventual ChatGTP-4 to be a clear winner for everyday users vs. search. The compute cost is an issue, but a temporary one since GPU power is still scaling nicely and there’s continued progress on getting model inference to use smaller compute budgets. If anyone was actually awake at the wheel at Google they should be afraid.